Farewell to the forests

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The cash-starved Somare Government is
sanctioning the illegal logging of PNG's
rainforests, and the timber is being used
for Australian furniture. Mark Forbes and
Melissa Fyfe report.

They are the Pacific's last great
tracks of unspoilt rainforest, 14
million lush hectares across Papua
New Guinea, ancient trees
encoiled by thick vines stretching
from damp undergrowth high into
a verdant canopy.

Inhabited by isolated tribes, these
forests, and the riches within them, have for
years been targeted by rapacious Malaysian
loggers, who have already stripped the
neighbouring Solomon Islands. Stands of
trees from PNG's hillsides are shipped south
and used in Australian homes, decking,
even barbecue trolleys. The finer wood from
silver ash, pencil cedar and kwila is sold on
to major furniture manufacturers by a large
Brisbane timber firm.

A bitter battle to preserve the forests has
been taken up by no less a man than former
US vice-president Al Gore. Greenpeace has
dispatched activists into the logging sites
and now the World Bank is refusing to
release $50 million in desperately needed
funds to PNG unless the Government of Sir
Michael Somare moves to ensure the timber
industry is sustainable and accountable.
Indignant, the Government brands the
criticism a conspiracy designed to sabotage
PNG.

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"All logging operations in the country are
legal," Forest Minister Patrick Pruaitch has
proclaimed in advertisements placed in
national newspapers.

The pressure has forced the Government
to review the operations of major logging
projects. Drafts of the review have been
obtained by The Age, and the contents are
explosive.

The Government's own review team has
found that PNG's massive logging industry
is not only environmentally unsustainable
but heading for economic disaster. Almost
every major logging project is run illegally
and the industry is characterised by "a
general contempt" for environmental and
conservation values.

According to the review, the Somare
Government shows no support for sustainable
timber production and appears
concerned only with increasing revenues by
establishing new logging projects and
ensuring none is shut down.

"The Department of Environment and
Conservation is essentially non-operational,"
the review states. Illegal actions by
loggers either go unreported or are not
acted on, with forestry officials taking "their
cue from the current political leaders ...
Unsustainable harvesting of the natural
forest estate finances about 5 per cent of
the Government annual budget."

Government ministers have illegally
extended logging operations and permits to
ship teak logs overseas were granted by the
Minister for Export Permits last year,
despite the logs being a prohibited export.

Landowner Tusuwe Nekaiye from the Kapolasi clan in front of a sign erected to try and prevent logging in Bula, Middle Fly district, Western Province.Picture:Sandy Scheltema/Geenpeace

Special criticism is reserved for the
Malaysian giant that dominates the
industry, Rimbunan Hijau. The multinational
company has a net worth of nearly
$2 billion and sits at the apex of political
influence in PNG, branching out into
restaurants, supermarkets, even one of the
nation's two daily newspapers. The
performance of Rimbunan Hijau's forest
operations was "seriously deficient", the
team found.

And, despite laws ensuring traditional
landowners share in logging's benefits, the
review found that promised infrastructure
for isolated areas, such as roads and
bridges, were not built or so poorly made
they soon crumbled.

"Logging was found to have little long
term beneficial impact on landowners,
although they bear the environmental
costs," it said.

Wawoi Guavi is Rimbunan
Hijau's massive logging
concession in PNG's
Western Province, servicing
the company's sawmill and
a Veneer Plant on the banks
of the Wawoi River.

In their traditional garb, the clans of
Wawoi Guavi look untouched by modern
civilisation. These clans depend on their
rainforest. They hunt and fish there, make
gardens and find medicines. The mountains
are also littered with sacred sites; burial
grounds, ceremonial creeks. They worry
that disturbance may upset the spirits of
their ancestors.

Site by site, they are struggling to protect
their cultural heritage. Kuwene Nakeye, a
landowner from the Haya clan, camped out
on a sacred site when she heard loggers
were putting a road through it.

"You cannot come through here, this is
an old village, there are burial sites and
okari nut trees," she told them.

She managed to protect the area, which
is now a reserve, but not before the loggers
fired shots above her head, she says.

The Government's review team is ringing
alarm bells after visiting earlier this year,
suggesting Rimbunan Hijau has transformed
a local police taskforce into a
private army to suppress opponents. The
police must be immediately replaced by
"trustworthy" officers "so that the
Government of PNG regains control of law
and order", its report states.

"It is further recommended that this be
considered as a matter of national security
and expedited as soon as practicable in
order to ensure the safety of genuine
landowners who are at risk."

Police and company officers discharged
firearms when landowners complained
about the destruction of burial grounds and
sacred sites, the review team was told. "The
use of physical force by the police taskforce
to intimidate employees and landowners
was one of the major issues raised by all the
members of the community."

A 10-year extension to Rimbunan Hijau's
logging permit at Wawoi Guavi was legally
questionable, the review states. The review
team also found that logging had extended
into new areas without approval.

Numerous environmental requirements
for logging operations were breached, with
no evidence of an environmental monitoring
and management program, as
required under PNG law. Run-off from the
veneer mill was heavily polluting the Wawoi
River. Effluent from logging camps was also
directly flowing into the river systems,
creating a "threat to downstream users".

The team found most landowners
wanted logging to continue — they had no
other avenue for development — but they
were not receiving contracted cash and
benefits. Funds were being diverted by
landowner companies, closely linked to
Rimbunan Hijau. Some roads and bridges
had been shoddily built, but "these infrastructures
are sustainable only as long as
the company is using them to extract logs
from the area", the review says.

Joe Chapman has 13 years' experience in
PNG and now runs the Queensland-based
TLB Timbers, a Rimbunan Hijau subsidiary,
which takes about half of the company's
17,000 cubic metres of sawn timber sent to
Australia from PNG each year.

The timber goes to more than 200
wholesale and retail companies. Light and
heavy hopea and water gum are used for
construction, and silver ash, pencil cedar
and kwila are used in furniture and joinery.

Familiar with criticism of the company,
Chapman says the economic value of
logging to PNG is often overlooked. Also, he
says, without sources of rural revenue
"serious urban drift" will occur, resulting in
lawlessness, which deters foreign investment.

"Everyone's got a view on the morality of
logging, however, they must understand
that in PNG, Rimbunan Hijau selectively
log; it is not like the logging practices
carried out, for instance, in parts of
Tasmania."

Chapman says complaints about logging
and roads destroying traditional burial
grounds and sacred places were new to him
and issues to be taken up by PNG authorities.

It is the PNG Government that decides
where logging operations go and Rimbunan
Hijau carries out the logging in accordance
with PNG laws, he says.

The grim picture officials painted
at Wawoi Guavi is echoed in
reports from another 14 major
logging projects. Landowners are
shortchanged, promises broken,
environmental laws ignored and
precious few attempts made at
regeneration.

The nexus between logging and political
leadership in PNG is strong, with the review
blaming a lack of political will for the
failure to bring the industry to account.

The Age has obtained an extraordinary
letter from Rimbunan Hijau's managing
director in PNG, James Lau, written as part
of a successful attempt to head off suggestions
the company be forced to comply
with the law at Wawoi Guavi and another of
its operations, Vailala. It details consultations
with PNG's most senior public servant
and arbiter of forestry issues, chief secretary
Joshua Kalinoe.

In the letter to PNG's Forest Board, Lau
boasts that he told Kalinoe to intervene and
object to the suggestion the timber permits
could be terminated and "direct the state
negotiation team to address the annual
allowable cut by considering economic
parameters as a matter of priority". In
short, Rimbunan Hijau wants to continue
to be able to cut more than double the
amount of timber allowed under its permit.

Kalinoe told The Age Rimbunan Hijau
has no direct access to him, but he had
warned Lau to come to the negotiating
table over its legal breaches or face suspension
of logging operations.

The company is logging on an illegal
permit, Kalinoe admits, but "the fact is he
(Lau) has a document authorised by a
Minister saying he has a legal permit".

Rimbuanan Hijau's resources meant it
could use the courts to frustrate attempts
to close its operations down, which was
"not in our interests", he says.

Pruaitch has told senior officials he needed
the company's money to "meet political
funding needs".

The revelations support claims made by
Sasa Zibe, who says he was sacked as
Environment Minister last year for
demanding environmental laws be
enforced, offending an entrenched forestry
network. "Not only within the department
itself, but the network within the industry
and network within the Government
circles, even among the ministers," he said
earlier this year.

However, expressing concerns about
Rimbunan Hijau's use of police, Kalinoe
says he has "instructed the Police
Commissioner to immediately investigate
the facts and start replacing officers who
are improperly influenced by the company.

I wouldn't be surprised if other companies
are involved in soliciting support of local
police involving measures that are not
within the law."

Despite the industry's favoured treatment,
the overall conclusion of the
Government forestry review is that under
current market conditions "timber production
as currently practised is not sustainable".

"At present, logging does not appear to
be economically viable in PNG. On a
national basis, economic costs exceed
economic gains."

PNG's peak environmental lobby group,
the Eco-forestry Forum, is demanding a
halt to all new logging permits and a full
inquiry.

"The industry is out of control and only
a commission of inquiry can hope to
uncover the depth of the corruption and
the mismanagement," says forum chair
Kenn Mondai.

The call appears unlikely to be heeded,
with the Somare Government pushing for
10 new "impact" logging projects to be
operational by the end of the year to boost
export income.

Kalinoe is hopeful environmental
requirements set out in an agreement
between PNG and the World Bank will be
met so $50 million in suspended funding
is released. He says it is vital to PNG's
future for logging to proceed and "we
need to have legal and environmental
issues put in place for the industry to be
sustainable".